Sputnik Stunned the World, and Its Rocket Scared the Pentagon

The standard Sputnik story goes like this: It was the launch of this metal ball that forced the United States to elevate the pursuit of science. But that's not quite true.

Technically speaking, Sputnik was no more sophisticated than a cheap transmitter from Radio Shack attached to 120 pounds of batteries. It was the R-7 launch vehicle that scared the pants off the U.S. military. The Soviets proved they not only had a rocket with precise guidance systems, but one that could launch a heavier payload than anything the Americans had.

The launch system on Oct. 4, 1957, was a one-shot deal. It was preset before takeoff and its trajectory could not be changed during flight. The Russians had to fire and pray.

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Despite its apparent simplicity, the impact of the R-7 rocket cannot be overstated. Sputnik was the first satellite humans launched into orbit, and it stunned the world.

"In being beaten so publicly by what we then regarded as a peasant nation, a nation whose totalitarian government embraced a set of values abhorrent to nearly all Americans, we felt that we were falling behind in our much-vaunted technical know-how and industrial capability," said NASA head Michael Griffin at the Space 2007 conference in September. "The small metal orb beeping overhead, visible in the clear fall sky to anyone who looked — and nearly everyone did — reminded us of this."

On Thursday, the space industry celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Sputnik launch, an event that ignited the space race and resulted in the United States reaching the moon 12 years later. Sputnik may have been simply built, the impact of its flight was immense, inspiring not only a whole generation of engineers, but the entire U.S. nation, to aim for space.

To mark the 50th anniversary of the space age, RussianSpaceWeb created this animation of the Sputnik satellite launch.

Prior to Sputnik's launch, the R-7 — originally an intercontinental ballistic missile — had twice been tested successfully. Both times, however, the heat shield failed upon re-entry, destroying the missile's payload: a dummy warhead.

In addition to precision, the R-7 had to have the muscle to reach orbit. The 184-pound Sputnik was small in comparison to the bus-sized communications satellites propelled into orbit today, but for its time, it was large. The metal moon weighed eight times as much as the device the United States planned to put into space.

By the time the United States had launched 20 pounds into orbit, the Russians had already launched Sputnik 2, at 1,118 pounds, more than 50 times as much.

Even a month before the Sputnik launch, many of the military, political and academic leaders in the Soviet Union saw no merit in putting such a rudimentary artificial moon above the Earth.

But the maverick bunch of engineers who built Sputnik predicted its political impact. In the Cold War mentality that took hold following World War II, Sputnik had a purpose: to show Washington that Moscow had a lead in the arms race and the technical wherewithal to face up to the United States.

"The Soviet Union must be first," Sergei Pavlovich Korolëv, chief designer of the Soviet missile program and the chief proponent of sending Sputnik into orbit, told dissenters the month before the satellite's launch, according to Matthew Brzezinski's book Red Moon Rising.

In fact, Korolëv didn't include much scientific apparatus besides the radio transmitters on Sputnik, precisely because he wanted to devote the satellite's weight allowance to making sure the redundant radio signals were strong enough to be heard by any ham radio operator.

Sputnik consisted of three silver-zinc accumulators, two D-200 radio transmitters, pressure and temperature transmitters, and a DTK-34 temperature-control system. This was contained within a polished, aluminum-alloy sphere pressurized with nitrogen gas and outfitted with whip-like antennas.

Its designers named it "PS-1", from prosteishiy sputnik, Russian for "simple satellite."

Even the shiny, round shape was dictated by the message the scientists wanted to send. Korolëv turned down several designs for the satellite, because they were not spherical — the best shape to reflect sunlight and remain visible from the United States.

"The overall design was to be able to convey the sound signal, but recall also that the satellite was polished to a high sheen. It was meant to be seen from the ground by an observer," Collins said.

Ironically, the light in the sky that earthlings followed in awe after Sputnik's launch was created by mirror-like prisms ejected from the final booster stage, not a reflection from the polished satellite, Boris Chertok, one of Korolëv's contemporaries who worked on the Soviet program, recently told the Associated Press. Sputnik was far dimmer and could only be seen with the unaided eye from rural areas.

Half a century after Sputnik sparked a massive national space program in the United States, NASA has again embarked on technology development to take Americans to the moon and beyond. This time, the pace is more measured, said Steve Dick, chief historian for NASA.

"We want it to be a sustainable program where we go back to stay," he said. Yet the historian acknowledged that large projects, such as a push for space, can benefit from a rivalry like the one lit by Sputnik.

"We seem to respond — at least the politicians and the budget people seem to respond — to competition better than cooperation," Dick said.

For three weeks, before Sputnik's batteries died, radio operators on Earth could listen to the satellite's "beep-beep" broadcast. On Jan. 3, 1958 — still four weeks before the first successful U.S. satellite launch — Sputnik fell to Earth, burning up in the atmosphere. Yet, the simple satellite continues to inspire people to look up.

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